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THE RANDOLPH EPISTLES. 






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THE RANDOLPH EPISTLES. 



The Souih's losses in fugitive slaves amount to 
$22,000,000 in the last 40 years, and her 
annual losses amount to $550,000, for which 
the North is responsible^ tfc. — Jury Trial in 
the Free Stales, devised solely for the enfran- 
chisement of the fugitives — The Military re- 
sources and strength of the South, rf-r. 

Washington Citt, July 18, 1850. 
About nineteen-twemieths of all the wars, 
civil and national, which have wasted and 
saddened the earth, have sprung out of 
aggressions upon the property-rights of men 
and nations. Mr. Webster once said, and 
with that felicity of thought for which he is 
so remarkable, that the men of the revolution 
were so sensitive to the least encroachment 
upon their property-rights that they even 
rebelled against a preamble, and took up 
arms against the first maritime power in the 
world, for the recitals of an act of Par- 
liament, &c. In homelier words, they 
maintained that those who pay the taxes 
must lay the taxes, and that the rights of 
taxation and representation were inseparable 
■elements of all rightful legislation. In sup- 
port of this principle they drew the sword, 
and sheathed it no move until they had 
cleaved the colonies and kingdom asunder. 
As practical grievances, the modeiate duties 
upon teas, stamps, &c, were scarcely felt, 
and the whole controversy arose about the 
right to impose them. Moreover, the re- 
venues raised were all destined to colonial 
uses; and in all the time the colonial tariff 
lasted, scarcely amounted to a tythe of what 



it costs a large portion of their descendant* 
annually, and over and above all the burthens 
and expenses of the State and Federal Gov- 
ernments, and without a dollar being applied 
to any public uses, or returning into their 
pockets, through any of the channels of the 
public expenditures. 

The descendants referred to are the people 
of the South, and the monies spoken of, are 
the ar.nual values of her fugitive slaves, 
which the citizens of the North entice from 
her borders and set at liberty. This has 
been carried on for these thirty or forty 
years, and in late years through organized 
associations, with alarming frequency and a 
most amazing audacity. One of the worst 
omens of the times is, the shamelessness with 
which of late, men of property and character 
at the North, avow and boast of their crimi- 
nal participation in decoying away and de- 
priving owners of their slaves in the slave 
States. It is scarcely two months ago since 
" The New York State Vigilance Anti- 
Slavery Committee," (of which tha opulent 
and famous Gerrit Smith is chairman) held 
its anniversary meeting in public in the city 
of New York, and I quote a single passage 
from its secretary's official report : 

" The Committee have within the yedr f 
since the 1st of May, 1849, assisted one 
hundred and fifty-one fugitives {for thai, 
you know, is our business) in escaping from, 
servitude!" 

Are these people aware how deeply they 
have criminated themselves in these avowals? 



Do the citizens of New York hold themselves 
irresponsible to public opinion in conniving 
at felonies and giving them impunity ? Do 
they not know that the members of this 
committee, by visiting a sister State, violat- 
ing her criminal laws, and carrying oil her 
property, themselves become, in the sense of 
the Constitution, fugitives from justice, and 
by virtue of their own confessions of the 
crimes they have committed, are subject to 
arrest and delivery to the authorities of the 
State whose laws have been broken ? These 
one hundred and fifty-one slaves, at the 
most moderate estimate, were worth $500 
a piece, which amounts to an aggregate 
value of $75,500; and if the same persons 



their felonious thieveries committed against 
the property-rights of her sister States, and 
in flagrant violation of the Constitution of 
the United States; yet no man lays hands 
on them, or denounces or reproves them ! 

I propose in this paper to bring these 
abuses to public attention. My subject is 
the escape to, and emancipation in the free 
States, of fugitives from labor from the slave 
States. My object is to ascertain, as nearly 
as possible, their numbers, their values, and 
the probable losses sustained by the South 
annually and- aggregately, in the course of 
the last forty years. This has never hsp.n 
attempted, that I know of. I have, indeed, 
occasionally seen some loose and unsatis- 



had publicly confessed that they had stolen j factory statements made upon one side and 



that amount of money from the same citizens 
in the States of Maryland or Virginia, or had 
fraudulently acquired it through counterfeit 



contradicted on the other, in the two Houses 
of Congress; but no data were given on 
either side, and the estimates seemed to be 



bank bills, is there a judicial officer in the State altogether conjectural. Entire accuracy in 
of N. York who would not have felt it to have suc h a matter, is, of course, unattainable; 
been his duty, to have caused them to have | but I see not why, through estimates drawn 



been arrested and imprisoned upon their own 
confessions of the felonies, and have detained 
them subject to the demand of the Executive 
uf the State whose law r s had been violated ? 

In all the Southern States, the stealing of 
slaves is one of the highest species of statu- 
tory felonies. In several of them it is pun- 
ished with death; and the mildest punishment 
for the crime in any of them, extends to hard 
labor and penitentiary confinement. Every 
one who entices away a slave, with intent to 
deprive the owner of his services, and all 
who aid and abet him as accessories before 
the fact or after the fact, are made thieves 
and felons by the laws, and shall suffer death, 
or imprisonment at hard labor for life or for 
years, according to the criminal laws of the 
jurisprudence where the trials are to be had ! 
Yet a Presbyterian church in the city ol 



from the science of numbers, and based upon 
the principles of population, we may not ap- 
proximate it near enough for all the useful 
ends for which such information is wanted. 
To ascertain the maximum of the South ? s 
losses, is more than I hope for, or shall aim. 
at; but a minbaum, and one large enough to 
startle and amaze both North and South, 
(except the close observers,) and sure enough 
to bring to it the assent of all candid minos 
in both sections, I do aim at, and mean to 
demonstrate and establish it, maugre the 
doubtings of skeptics North or South. 

My materials are accessible to everybody; 
they are all contained in the United States 
census, and the several enumerations of the 
free negroes in the several States, (running 
through a course of thirty years, commencing 
in 1S10, ending in 1840,) will embrace the 



New York, makes free its pews to these I entire range of the calculation. The mate- 
fugitives from justice, and there in the pre- rials we have, then, are enumerations 



oi 



sence of the New York public, they detail this class of the population in each decennial 



cycle for these thirty years; and the materials 
we want are, its aggregate increase^ and its 
rate percent, of increase in each of the great 
divisions of the country, the North, the 
Middle, and Western, and the South, for 
the whole time. 

The principle and the mode of the opera- 
tion may be unfolded in a trice : By taking 
the six New England States, as most remote 
from the slave States and less influenced by 
accessions from their fugitive slaves, and 
finding their rate per cent, of increase; and 
then by taking the six original slave States, 
where the free negroes of the Union dwell in 
the largest numbers, and have thriven most, 
and finding a rate per cent, of increase there; 
the. comparison between the two ought to 
give us a safe mean, to measure the aggie 



and impart to the mean therefore, a far 
hio-her rate per cent, for the natural increase 
than the real facts, would huve shown, and 
per consequence, exhibits the excess of free 
negroes in the midland free States, over and 
above the natural increase, far below what 
it really is. 

In the wry of general facts touching the 
growth of the population of the United States, 
I think these postulata may bs safely as- 
sumed : 

1. That the natural increase of the South- 
ern slaves exceeds that of any other condition 
of men on this continent. 

2. That the general census cannot show 
the fact, because it adds to the natural in- 
crease of the white race here, the vast an- 
nual accessions from foreign emigration; 



gate natural increase in both sections Now, j and on the other hand, it allows nothing st 
taking that mean and applying it to the all for these vast annual deductions from 
.-.even Middle and Western States, (five | slave-numbers, which are made through pri- 
6f which border upon, and the two others j vate emancipation, and escape and enfran- 
ai'e most accessible to, the slave States,) | chisement at the North; and hence, the 
we may fairly conclude that the excess of census gives the white race the precedence 



free negroes found there over and above 
that mean rate per cent, of the natural in- 
crease, is made up wholly of fugitive slaves 
from the slave States. I am aware that the 
mean I have adopted is not strictly accurate, 
but the North cannot complain of the inac- 
curacy, as that inaccuracy consists entirely 
in underrating the Soulh's losses, for (in 
the absence of all other data) I was con- 
strained to follow the census, and could make 
no deductions therefore, from the natural 
increase of the free negroes of New England, 
of those large accessions which are annually 
made to it from tha migrations of fugitive 
slaves from the South; and for the same 
reasons no deductions were made from the 
natural increase of free negroes in the slave 
States; of the still larger accessions made to 
them from the heavy annual emancipations 
of slaves. All these accessions from both sec- 
tions consequently are cast into the account, 



in natural increase. 

3. This being so, and such the cause, that 
the white population of the United Slates 
about doubles itself in every period of two- 
and-a-half decennial cycles, or twenty-five 
years. 

4. That the slave population of the United 
States more than doubles itself in every 
period of three decennial cycles, or thirty 
years from the natural increase alone. 

5. That the free negroes of the Southern 
States double in about every period of three- 
and-a-half decennial cycles, or thirty-five 
years from the natural increase alone. 

6. That the free negroes in the Northera 
and Western States double in about every 
period of four decennial cycles, or forty years 
from the natural increase alone. 

7. That the free negroes of the Southern 
States are the most stable and least migra- 
torv of any class of the population of the 



United States, if we except their migrations 
to other slave States. 

8. That considerably more of the free 
negroes migrate from the free States to the 
slave States, than from the slave States to 
the free States. 

9. That forty-nine fiftieths of all native ne- 
groes of the slave States who are found in 
the free States, are or were fugitive slaves 
when they left the slave States. 

With these preliminaries, I will now pre- 
sent a table which I have prepared from the 
Census-book of the United States, showing, 

"table. 





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1st. The aggregate numbers of the free 
»e?roes in the six New England States 



from 1810 to 1840, (inclusive,) with their 
aggregate rate per cent, of increase, as also 
its rate per cent, per annum. 

2d. The aggregate numbers of the free 
negroes in the six original slave States 
between the same periods, with their rate 
per cent, of increase in the aggregate and 
per annum. 

3d. The seperate as well as the aggregate 
numbers of the free negroes in the seven 
midland free States, as well as the aggregate 
rate per cent, of increase for thirty years, 
the rates per cent, per annum for the 
whole and for each State. 

I have thus put it in the power of all to 
yerify or to falsify (as the case may be) my 
data and deductions, from the details of the 
Census rolls, and the reasonings to be drawn 
from them. I earnestly invite all such to 
look into this table, and scrutinize it and 
ponder on it. There is scarcely a man in a 
thousand who pries into, or realizes the pro- 
gressive and intolerable wrongs and injuries 
which the South suffers yearly — monthly — ■ 
daily — from these furtive and felonious ag- 
gressions upon her property-rights, but those 
who do, have made an aggregate of losses 
far heavier than mine. 

The increase of population in the United 
States is unexampled in all the world. Even 
bating its accessions from foreign emigration, 
and it is still without a rival. As it is, and 
ill have said, it doubles itself in 25 years. 
The rate of increase, therefore, is four per 
cent, per annum. Now " tum^ to the ^ free 
negroesj of ^New k England. g They have 
dwindled and dwindled, until they have al- 
most reached a stand still. Their annual 
increase amounts to but one-tenth of one 
per cent! They could not double them- 
selves, at that rate, short of four hundred 
years! The South's fugitive slaves, which 
N"ew England is known to shelter and free 
annually, without compensating their own- 
ers, (independently of the large numbers 



she aids in escaping to Canada,) more than 
accounts for her entire annual increase, and 
consequently shows her native negro popu- 
lation gradually wearing out and wasting 
away. 
f Even the free negroes of the six original 
slave States of Delaware, Maryland,"Virginia, 
North Carolina, South Carolina, and Geor- 
gia, only show an annual increase of two 
per cent., but the deficiency is fully ac- 
counted for in the migrations of free negroes 
from the old to the new slave States. 

But turning from these commcn-place de- 
tails, and casting our eyes upon the columns 
portraying the progress of free negroism, in 
those of the free States which border on, 
•r are almost equally accessible to the slave 
, States, and lo ! what wonders and contrasts 
strike and astonish us ! The very minimum 
of increase in the seven middle free States, 
reaches to 3 3-4 per cent, per annum, while 
Massachusetts, with her great free negro 
thoroughfare of Boston, reaches no higher 
than to seven-eighths of one per cent, per 
annum! Why, at the rate of 3 3-4 per 
cent per annum, they would double every 
twenty-seven years, and it is but one 
quarter of one per cent, per annum less 
than the rate of increase of the white popu- 
lation of the United States, and falls but 
that much short therefore, of doubling itself 
in every twenty-five years ! So much for 
the minimum of increase. 

But what are we to say of the maximum 
of increase in these States, of this the most 
sluggish and unthrifty class of people within 
our borders ? On turning to the rolls for 
Illinois and Michigan, I found these States 
had been absorbed and deeply intent upon 
the manufacturing of free negroes, and in- 
creasing their store at the amazing rate of 
upwards of sixteen per cent, per annum, 
each, and as no community of living moth- 
ers ever yet gave births in quadruples, it 
was plain that these fabled procreations were 



but the spoils of felonious plunder, and wil- 
der the morals of the Free-soilers, that num- 
bers give law, and thefts give title, numer- 
ous and valuable slaves are enticed from 
their owners ; and, in cssociation with the 
vilest and worthliest that shame the earth, 
they are hidden away in the chrysallis as 
fugitives from labor, but soon to emerge and 
take wing as fugitives from justice ! Only 
to think of an increase of sixteen per cent, 
per annum, the quadruple of that of the 
United States, and which would double the 
free negro population of those States every 
six-and-a-quarter years ! But why should I 
dwell on these cases, when there stands 
Ohio augmenting her free negroes out of the 
South's fugitive slaves, until her rate of in- 
crease per annum, has actually attained to 
27 per cent., which would nearly double them 
seven times in twenty-five years, or more than 
double them every four years ; and even 
such a marvel is lost in the wonder that 
there stands Indiana by her side, conspic- 
uous over all, in the unexampled augmenta- 
tion of her free negroes up to 62 1-3 per 
cent, per annum ! At this rate of increase, 
instead of doubling like the population of 
the United States, once in 25 years, the- 
free negro population of Indiana doubles, 
and has [doubled itself in that time, fifteen 
times, and in a word, doubles itself every 
other other year, with 12 1-3 per cent, per 
annum of increase to spare ! 

These vast augmentations of free negroes- 
in these ominous localities, will have one 
good effect all over the land. They will 
unmask this enormity to all men's gaze, and 
point to the materials out of which they 
have been wrought. None can doubt where 
the great body of these materials came from. 
Had all the free negroes cf New England 
been emptied into the lap of these midland 
States, they would not have accounted for a 
tythe of the augmentation above the natural 
increase. It is not a possible case, that that 



population, and in that region, should have 
increased by the natural and usual means, 
at as high a rate annually as three per cent. 
It is scarcely credible that it could have 
reached two per cent, there, and by these 
means ; and it passes rny belief, that the in- 
crease ever did or could have reached two- 
and-a-half per cent, there. Nevertheless, 
that I may have my data and deductions 
free from any possible cavil, I shall waive 
the lesser mean I designed to derive from 
comparing the rates of annual increase be- 
tween New England and the original slave 
States, and adopt the rate of two-and-a- 
half per cent, per annum as the mean for 
ascertaining the augmentations of free ne- 
groes in the midland States, over and above 
the usual and natural means : That is to say, 
that after allowing two-and-a-half per cent. 
for the natural and usual increase, marking 
all augmentations beyond it as excess, and 
marking that excess itself, as a true exponent 
of the real numbers of the fugitive slaves 
within the designated localities. 

I will not elaborate this paper by showing 
the process by detail. No one need put 
•his faith, either in my skill or my fairness. 
The figures are before him, and he must 
cypher out the result for himself. 

I find the excessive augmentations of free 
negroes (fugitive slaves) beyond the natural 
and usual means, in the States now to be 
named, to be as follows : 

New York 3 5-6 per cent, 
excess over 2 1-2 per ct. 5,734 fugitive Stdoes. 

New Jersey 5 1-2 per cent.; 

excess over 2 1-2 per ct. 7,221 do. do 

Pennsylvania 3-3-4 perct.; 

excess over 2 1-2 per ct. 9,602 do. do. 

Ohio 27 per cent.; excess 

over 2 1-2 per cent. 14,033 do. do. 

Indiana 62 3-4 per ct.; ex- 
cess over 2 1-2 per cent. 6,502 do. do. 

Illinois 16 1-4 per cent.; ex- 
cess over 2 1-2 per cent. 2,535 do. do. 

Michigan 16 2-3 per cent.; 

excess over 2 1-2 per ct. 497 do. do. 

Total fugitive slaves in the 

above estimates - 46,224 in 30 year-. 
A.dd the estimated number 

of fusrithe slaves from 



1840 to 1850, upon the ratio 

shown bet. 1830 & 1840 15,400 in 10 years. 

Total fugitive slaves from 

1810 to 1850, - - 61,624 in 40 years. 



Number of fugitive slaves 
escaping to the States 
annually, - 1,540 

Having thus ascertained the number of 
fugitive slaves escaping into these States, 
the next thing to be done is, to assign them. 
a rateable value ; and, it should be noted, 
that in nineteen cases out of twenty, the 
fugitives are the most valuable descriptioa 
of slaves, young men, artizans, mechanics — 
the intelligent, the robust, the healthy. After 
striking ofl 50 per cent, of the present aver- 
age market rate of slaves of that desciip- 
tion, $450 per head will be found a very- 
moderate valuation, and will show the'- 
losses aggregately and annually as follows: 

To 61,624 fugitive slaves valued at 

$450 each, - $27,730 S09 

To the loss annually of 1,540 fugitive 

slaves at $45, each, - - - #693,03* 

I believe the data which have formed the 
basis of all my calculations and estimates, 
have been moderate to a fault. Just, I at* 
sure they are, and fairer they could not be. 
But it has just occurred to me that New 
York and New Jersey, manumitted a num- 
ber of slaves in the course of the thirty 
years between 1810 and 1S40, and Penn- 
sylvania some also. 1 have heard, indeed, 
that a large proportion of these were re- 
moved to the South, before their terms ot 
manumission took effect, and that their 
bondage, or at least their service, continuing 
there, their domicils in these States were 
lost. Be that as it may, 1 am not willing 
to leave these estimates to distrust, so t» 
guard all possible mistakes, I shall now 
strike one-fifth, or twenty per centum from 
the estimates of both the aggregate and an- 
nual losses, reducing the former to $22,- 
184,640, and the latter to $5-13,400; and 
■ (Tor good measure) casting into the account, 
[New England's share of liability to the 



South during the same period, for the like 
aggressions, and not less than five hundred 
slaves, (valued at $225,000) whom the 
North assists annually to escape to Canada 

Let us pause. Here is an array of losses 
reaching up to 22 millions of dollars ! Who 
lost it ? The South ! Who caused it ? The 
North ! What is it ? A debt ! Who 
owns it ? The South ! Who owes it ? The 
North ! How did it originate ? From 
spoliations to that amount of the South's 
property. Were the spoliations prompted 
by any necessities of State or of circum- 
stance ? By neither : The aggressions 
were both wilful and wanton. The North 
covctcJ what she did not want : She took 
what was not her own : She sacrificed what 
■belonged to others : The motive of the 
emprize was not the thrift of the spoilers 1 
but the wrong and injury of the plundered. 

I have shown the vast amount of slave pro- 
perty which has thus been taken from the 
slave States, Irom reliable data : I have 
shown what it was worth at a very moderate 
valuation, and it stands proven as a subsisting 
and valid debt, amounting to $22,18-4,640. 
Who are liable for the payment r Those 
who took the property — those who received 
it — those who kept it — those who gave it 
protection — and those who evaded or resist- 
ed its reclamation : The citizens of the Iree 
States are liable, — the governments of those 
States are liable, — or in one comprehensive 
word, the North is liable. There is not a 
legal forum in Christendom, where such a 
claim, for such a cause, with equal proofs, 
between man and man, or nation and nation 
would not be recognized and enforced. Why 
it has been done " time out of mind,' 1 — and 
the claiming and recovery of similar claims 
along the thoroughfares of the world, consti- 
tute at this time the current business of men 
and of natinos. What but the foreign claims 
of her citizens prompted Great Britain to 
prowl over the seas like a huge Leviathan 



Tax-Collector, and menace aggressive war 
in the ports of Venezuela, Nicaragua and 
Honduras, of Greece, Tuscany and Leghorn? 
What was it during General Jackson's Pre- 
sidency, which brought the United States 
and France to the very brink of war, but the 
wavering hesitancy of Louis Philippe and the 
French Chambers, to execute the treaty of 
Paris, providing indemnity for French spolia- 
tions upon American Commerce, under the 
Berlin and Milan Decrees ? Where in alL 
South America have we a Minister whose 
whole functions of embassy are not engrossed 
with the trials and drudgeries of an ac- 
countant, in debating and adjusting at the 
bar of nations, the spoliated property-rights 
of American citizens ? What originated and 
aggravated up to the moment of rupture, the 
war with Mexico, more than her seizures,, 
| detentions and confiscations of American pro- 
perty, and what but the national protection, 
due to the property-rights of all Americaa 
citizens of all sections, has instituted the 
commission now sitting here, for the adjust- 
ment of American claims for Mexican spolia- 
tions ? And what is it at this moment that 
threatens our peaceful relations with Portugal, 
but the property-rights of our citizens, invol- 
ved in the belligerent capture of an Ameri- 
can privateer, while under Portuguese pro- 
tection in the harbour of Fayal, near forty- 
years ago r Now amid this vast and diver- 
sified mass of American claims, there i? not 
among them all, a single one juster of right, 
clearer of fact, or more valid of law, than that 
of the South upon the North, for the spolia- 
tions and confiscations referred to and estab- 
lished in this paper, and in amount it far ex- 
ceeds the ichole of them put together ! 

This then being a just debt, in the Soath's 
name, I demand to know, why, like all other 
just debts, it should not be paid ? Two 
reasons have been given by the. ISorth why 
it should not : 

One rt ason is, that slaves are not property^ 



10 



and are not the basis therefore of valuation 
and indebtedness. But besides that, Con- 
gress has repeatedly assessed their value and 
taxed them as property, and sold them as such 
under executions, the North is estopped from 
taking this ground by her own act. In 
1815, (during the war with Great Britain) 
she, in common with the South, insisted that 
Great Britain should either make restitution 
of, or payment for, several hundred slaves as 
-property, which she had carried away from 
the slave States during her investment of the 
Southern coast. And how did Great Britain, 
the leading Abolition power in the world, 
deal with such a proposal ? She received 
it with respect, acknowledged it to be just, 
and made full payment for the slaves, with 
interest for their detention, and thus fully re- 
cognized the property-rights of Southerners in 
their slaves, even against their adverse claims 
*tnd possessions as belligerents. The North 
•committed herself to that proposal by making- 
it, and she ratified it by receiving payment 
for the property with interest from the Brit- 
ish Exchequer. 

The other reason is, that the nature of our 
•Union is incompatible with the enforcement 
of such a demand. Is it ? Then the Union 
must be incompatible with its own principles, 
'for the Union is itself but an incident and 
dependency of the Constitution, and the sur- 
render and delivery of fugitive slaves by the 
States they are found in, was one of the fun- 
damental conditions of its formation ; and 
those who have not shut their eyes to the 
gloomy portents which sadden the times, 
*nust know, that the observance of its provi- 
sions will be insisted on as the fundamental 
condition of its continuance. The North 
-would have us believe, that the preservation 
of that Union is an object of her first and pro- 
foundest regards ; and lo ! she commends it 
to the South's support and affections, by in- 
sisting that while it lasts, she can despoil the 
South of her property ad libitum and be ex- 
empt from restitution or liability, while, if it 



were at an end, the North, like all the civili- 
zed nations of the earth, would be bound and 
constrained to make full restitution or pay- 
ment, under the grave penalties of national 
dishonor and the chances of war ! Without 
a treaty stipulation for the extradition of fugi- 
tives from labor, in derogation of the doc- 
trine of the British constitution that there 
can be no property in man, in disparagement 
of her belligerent rights as a captor within 
her enemy's jurisdiction, — behold Great 
Britain (in conformity with the Consuetu- 
dinary Law of nations) attesting her rever- 
ence for the rights of private property, amid 
the waste and confiscations of offensive war, 
and rating and paying for our captured and 
deported slaves at their full value ! Gainsay 
it who may, that self-despoiling example, so 
meet for observance, so worthy of praise and 
so just in itself, has drawn to it the sponta- 
neous concurrence of all nations, and made 
itself the law of the world in peace and in 
war. 



Such is the sanction and inviolability se- 
cured to private property-rights by a com- 
mon consent and the reverenced usages be- 
tween all nations, and without a treaty 
stipulation to enforce their performance. — 
In all Christendom there is not an exception 
to be brought against these usages, — not a 
question to be raised upon th?se rights of 
reclamation — but the exception to be found, 
God help us ! in our own sovereign sister- 
hood of States ! Yes ! — here, where a thou- 
sand glorious deeds and remembrances bound 
and still holds us together in Federative 
Union, and whom common interests and 
affections have endeared to one another, — 
here where we have a Treaty stipulation, or 
rather something far better and weightier — 
a Constitutional Pact, obliging us to the 

DELIVERY AND RESTITUTION OF FUGITIVE. 

Slaves, — here, where that stipulation has 
formed and yet forms one of the main condi- 
tions of cur Federal Status in the past, 



11 



and now, — yes here, where we fully recog- 
nize the sacredness of the rights of private 
property, (being foreign property) through 
all the scath and waste of war, — we who 
have given to the nations, through the 
whole course of the Mexican war, — a thou- 
sand telling and glorious testimonies of our 
national appreciation and reverence for that 
principle, yet the moment it is brought home 
and applied to our property-interests with 
one another — the moment it becomes the 
basis if a debt between the North and South, 
the authority of all precedents is cast aside, 
the principle is renounced, restitution is with- 
held, all payment refused, the aggressions go 
hen, the fugitives increase, and our rights oi 
property, like our rights of migration and set- 
tlement and sovereignty in reference to our 
Federal domains and distant sea-boards, are 
are subjected to the caprices, repulsions, and 
exactions of the law of the strongest ! The 
Constitution guaranties to the South protec- 
tion and security for her property-rights, but 
the nature of the Union forbids their enforce- 
ment ! According to this, the terms of the 
Constitution give us all we can claim, while 
the action of the Constitution takes all of them 
away ! — With the Constitution, reclamations 
are impracticable and the aggressions must 
continue ; without the Constitution, the recla- 
mations could be made, and the aggressions 
must cease ! Such seem the obvious deduc- 
tions from the Noith's reasons why the South 
should cling to the connection, and submit to 
her oppressions ! 

With aggregate losses in fugitive slaves 
in the course of the last 40 years amounting 
to $22,000,100, with progressive losses at 
the rate of $550,C00 per annum, the South 
has come up to Congress at the present ses- 
sion, and (as every native son who loves 
and honors her hopes) for the last time, and 
•ffered to buy her peace and stabilitate the 
Union through a surrender to the North of 
ker liabiliiLs for the $22,000,000, upou 



the simple condition that she would give 
prompt and faithful effect to the provisions ®£ 
the Constitution, desist from all future ag- 
gressions in aiding the escape of fugitive 
slaves, and remove all obstructions to their 
lawful capture and recovery in the Free 
States. In the early days of the session, the 
matter was brought into debate; the Southern 
members were, kindly listened to, and all 
candid Northern numbers admitted that the 
complaints were just, that the grievances 
were serious and weighty, and that effective 
remedies ought to be applied. A bill was 
introduced, but had made little progress 
before down came from the North an ava- 
lanche of petitions and remonstrances, castinc- 
every impediment in its way. Soon, the 
Committee of Thirteen reeled under the 
blight of the infection, and by some mystic 
mutations of positions, which remains a. 
sealed book to the uninitiated, behold ! the 
South loses her place as a Complainant be- 
fore the Committee, and takes the attitude 
of a Defendant to the North's complaints* 
Thus she emerged into day from the Com- 
mittee-room, and thus she stands now.— 
There is the Committee's report, and there 
are the two sections relating to the reclama- 
tions of fugitive slaves; and it is plain cposs, 
their face that the whole aim of both is to 
protect fugitives from spurious claims. Every 
one can examine them for himself. Id© 
not mean to enter at all into the subject here- . 
but no candid man can deny, but that these 
sections impose additional burthens, expen- 
ses and delays upon claimants; the one sec- - 
tion cumulating the proofs without cumulat- 
ing the remedies, and the other clogging the 
way by cumulating jury-trials upon the jury=- 
trials provided by the States in pari materia,, 
Both sections therefore are obstructions, net- 
helps to the reclamations of fugitive slaves^,. 
and multiply the chances of their ultimate 
escape. But how came the sections there?- 
Most obviously, the South did not want thexny 



12 



wrongs, and implored from the justice of 
Congress, the enactment of effective provi- 
sions to enforce the plain guarantees of the 
Constitution for the protection and security 
of the property-rights of the citizens ! And 
what is devised as the great healing measure 
of remedial justice ? A reference of all the 
cases to fanatic juries impannelled from the 
very sympathizers who have prompted the 
injury and wrought the wrong, and whose 
plighted principle of organized fellowship it 
is, that man can have no lawful property in 
man, and the only issue to the jury is, whether 
the captured fugitive is the slave properly of 
(.he person who claims him ! Why the whole 
thing is but a mockery and an insult ; a 
mockery, because the verdict would be but 
a lesfal form for announcing a foregone con- 
clusion ; and an insult, because it aims at the 
extinction of the right it professes to secure. 
The only grievances brought to the nctice of 
Congress (and they of long standing and 
rapidly on the increase) were the practices 
of citizens from the free States enticing slaves 
from their owners, protecting, concealing and 
succouring them, screening them from arrest, 
rescuing them from capture, and subjecting 
the claimants in quest of them to the harrass- 
ments and perils of mobs and murders. 
These grievances are real and acknowledged 
so to be, and juries have no functions appro- 
priate to their prevention. They could not I 
be needed to inspect the title papers of 
claimants and to revise the decisions of Judges 



and the North had no need for them, for 
Mr. Clay declared in the Senate that every 
member of the Committee from the Free 
States had stated, that they had never heard 
of an instance ab urbe condila to the present 
day, in which a fugitive had been claimed 
as a slave, who had not been proven to be 
such. This sort of legislation can deceive 
nobody who will think for himself. Without 
a single fraudulent claim made in CO years, 
there was no mischief quoad hoc to remedy, 
and lie has more acuteness than I have, who 
thinks that these, sections were adapted to 
advance the right and insure the reclamation. 
But bad as these sections are, and even 
should the South again give way as afore- 
time, would they content the arrogant and 
all-grasping North ? Not they ! A remedy 
rather that strikes at the root of the right and 
subverts it, pleases her taste and befits her 
resolves, and nothing short of it can. Ac- 
cordingly a jury trial at the vicinage of the 
capture and not at the vic'nage of the flight 
is the remedy devised, and with scarcely a 
disguise, devised for the manumission of the 
man and the confiscation of the property. 
And who have the Free soilers found to lead 
on this inglorious assault upon the national 
jurisprudence and the constitutional rights of 
the South ? A statesman in front among the 
foremost, an eminent jurist, one of the great 

lights of the land, who has made the ancient 

t 
Black Letter and English Common Law, the 

study of a life-time ; who has held with Sir 

Edward Coke and all the Feudalists from I or Commissioners ordering the delivery of 

earliest manhood, through a distinguished I fugitive slaves, for Mr. Webster bears testi- 

career, up to a mature old age, that in all . mony, that never in a single instance in sixty 



trials for life or for freedom, the vicinage of 
the facts must be the forum of the trial ; I 
mean the scholar, thejuris-consult,the states- 
man, Senator Webster of Massachusetts. 
What a contrast is here, to the lofty eminence j wanted for the security of claimants against 



years, has any one of those officials com- 
mitted a mistake in surrendering a fugitive 
to a claimant who was not a slave, and not 
Jury-trials then not being 



his owner. 



he stood on but a few months ago, when in the 
presence of the nation, he arraigned the 



the obstructions to reclamations, not being 
needed for the security of fusritiw. slaves from 



$SJjQXth?s aggressions, plead the Soutli&iithe arts and devices of a simulated owner- 



13 



ship, can be insisted on or desired but for 
the one lawless purpose, of freeing the slave 
and despoiling the master, in defiance ot the 
proofs and in breach of the Constitution ! ll 
may be said, indeed, that juries in the free 
States have occasionally given exemplary 
damages against persons who have rescued 
fugitive slaves from capture, and so they 
have ; but that makes a very different issue, 
in their eyes, fr:m that which shall involve 
the liberty or slavery for a life time of a hu- 
man being before them, pleading for freedom 
and imploring their sympathies and mercy, 
which can reach the heart and sway 



and mischief, will combine to take our pro- 
perty from us at the rate of upwards of 
$550,000 per annum ! 

The case is unexampled in all the world. 
No civilized people have ever before, and for 
so long a series of years, oppressed another 
as the North have oppressed the South, and 
none upon the face of the earth have sub- 
mitted, or would have submitted as the South 
has. In every year of such unprovoked ag- 
gressions, the men of the Revolution would 
have found a justification if not a necessity 
for prompt and bloody revolt — if their gal- 
lant and victorious resistance to slighter 



its impulses. Rest assured, that a jury's wrongs, against infinitely vaster odds than 
verdict in a free State, surrendering up now contrast the military strength and re- 



a fugitive slave to bondage for life, will 
be one of those marvelous novelties, 
which no one now alive is likely to wit- 
ness. I doubt rne much, if it be ever put to 
the test; for what Southerner of sense, would 
throw away his money in so hopeless and 
perilous an emprise, as the pursuit and 
rescue of his slave from the hands of the 
spoiler, through a verdict from jurors who 
bold, that a man's freedom is a gift he was 
born with, and which 111 the paper titles in 
the world could neither disprove nor take 
away. Yet all the appearances are, that 
without such a verdict, he cannot have his 
slaves, for abolition arts, and mobs, and mur- 
ders, have long since made the provisions 
cf the existing law impotent for service and 
a mockery to claimants ; and so long as the 
South will endure her oppressions, Congress 
will pass no law upon the subject, which 
shall not be a nullity on its face, through the 
forgone verdicts of enfranchisement it will 
prognosticate and point to, from the free soil 
juries. The fugitives will increase, the 
perils of capture will multiply, pursuits 
will be rarer and reclamations out of the 
question. The debt of $22,000,000 will 
remain unpaid, and the citizens of the free 
States, without the shadow of a pretext or of 



sources of the North and South, is proof of 
a spirit that would not brook oppression, and 
dare all for their rights, whatever the risk. 
Nor is there a trace in oughtthat history has 
taken charge of in the career of our brethren 
of the North, which proves or suggests that 
they would have borne with a tythe of the 
oppressions which the South has submitted to 
from them All looks otherwise from the 
lights that are before us. Shay's rebellion 
in New England — the whisky insurrection 
of Pennsylvania — the stealthy treasons in 
embryo at Hartford, amply attest their aptness 
for resistance and revolt even against their 
own brethren, wherever they can make even 
fancied aggressions put on the semblance of 
real wrongs. Why, what are they doing 
now ? Are they not urging on the Govern- 
ment to the point of rupture with a foreign 
country, to recover the paltry value of a 
yankee privateer, which Great Britain seized 
in the port of Fayal forty years ago ? Por- 
tugal never laid hands upon the property, nor 
connived at the aggession — nor consented to 
it. She was neutral to the war — neutral to the 
capture, and powerless to prevent it. And if 
a mere constructive liability for the payment 
of $30,000, could thus rouse the North's 
ire to the fighting point, who could predesti- 



a use to apply it to, but in mere wantonness nate her foibearance when coming to the 



14 



knowledge, that Southerners, year by year, 
were prowling past her borders and driving 
off her flocks and herds to the value of $550,- 
000 per annum ? Who could doubt her al- 
ternatives : payment for the property and 
•cessation of the wrongs, or civil war ? No 
man North of Mason and Dixon's line, but 
realizes as he reads this, that one or the 
other would be inevitable ; and no man 
South of it but would say, that her alterna- 
tives were just, and applaud the spirit that 
resolved them. 

If the North would not have submitted, 
and ought not to have submitted to similar 
aggressions, why has the South submitted ? 
Is she less valiant than the North ? If she is, 
the North must know it, for they stood and 
strived together through the Revolution — 
through the war of 1812 — and more recently 
upon the battle-fields of Mexico, and I am 
quite willing that the North should name the 
occasions, when the South was out of front 
where the perils flew thickest, and when the 
South gave way, where the North stood firm. 
Ordoes it result from the South's concious- 
-iness of inferiority in the arts and appliances 
tof-suceessful resistance ? The North will fin- 
tbe South's answer in the masterly address 
to the Nashville Convention, by a Southern 
soldier of the highest order of military genius 
and powers of combination, (General Felix 
Huston, of Louisiana,) upon the military ca- 
pacities and resources of the South, with the 
demonstrations he brings from all history and 
every age, of the mighty elements of martial 
strength inherent in the slavery institution, 
:rom the military necessity of having eight 
.laborers at home to support each soldier in 
the field, with the moral impossibility of 
serious insurrection from the want of all con- 
cert, the slaves' ignorance of each other and 
of the arts and implements of war, &c. &c. 
When the facts and reasonings of that power- 
ful pamphlet, shall have found its way into 
the North's hands (as it shortly will) the 



North will stand my sponser for the predic- 
tion, that, whether the Union stands or falls, 
no man now living will witness an attempt 
from the North to coerce the South inte 
terms, by crossing her borders in martial 
array, and Congressmen will think twice be- 
fore again menacing the South, with the 
coming of those fiery regiments, which will 
either never get there, or never get away, a* 
may best beseem the regiments themselves. 
The alternatives will be these: be theirs' 
the choice ! 

No, no, Messieurs, all attributions of the 
South's forbearance to the state of the South'* 
nerves, or the South's means, are wide, im- 
measurably wide of the maik. Hi<1 that 
been all, the North would have had a chance 
of shivering a lance with her long ago. — 
The same cause that restrained her hitherto, 
restrains her now, an overweening love of 
the Union, which if it shall last much longer 
and bring her no redress, will bring her te 
ruin and cover her with shame ! It is amaz- 
ing, it is alarming, yet it is admirable, te 
pause and ponder on a love of Union so pro- 
found and reverential and abiding. Any 
other people under the Sun, victimized an4 
aggrieved as the South has been in the 
Union's name, would have shivered it te 
atoms from the might which slumbers in her 
soldierly arm ! Had the North loved the 
Union as the South does, she would never 
have imperilled it, by degrading her witk 
trials, so wounding to her honor and so oner- 
ous to be borne with. Had the South show* 
no sounder and deeper attachment to the 
Union than the North has, that Union wouli 
long have been numbered with the M thing* 
that were." To all seeming, the North's 
attachment to the Union, is neither deeper 
nor holier than the thrift she derives from it, 
and her wanton injuries and ceaseless revil- 
ings of her brethren, what are they but 
proofs of it? With the South, it is a sea- 
timent and a passion, and what are her 



15 



wrongs and her forbearance but the proofs 
of it ? Will the South bear longer with her 
wrongs and with more from her oppressors ? 
•God of his forecast knows ! She may; but 
we bless Providence and trust, she may not ! 
With States as with men, submission has its 
bounds. It is best to respect them. It is 
perilous to pass them. When oppression's 
cup is full, it will hold no more : It will bear 



what it has, but a single drop besides causes' 
an overflow and carries away with it and 
spreads around ten thousand drops which un- 
molested, would have turned to vapor and 
have passed away, but that single drop does 
all the mischief, and aptly compares witli 
the last ounce of the burthen, which broke 
the back of the camel ! 

Randolph of Roanoke. 









t d j nn 



